TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE -ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH TN GERMANY. Too little is known in this country of Ronge, Czersky, and their followers, to supply materials for an estimate of the character and importance of the new schism in the Roman Catholic Church of Germany. But the sect is probably strong and increasing, since the mob have betaken themselves to break windows and pelt princes in its behalf; that being the test by which governments in all ages have agreed to measure the reality and intensity of religious or political enthusiasm. To those who have paid attention to the progress of opinion among the Roman Catholics of Germany for the last half-century, the defection of Ronge, and the apparently rapid progress of his doctrines, are not surprising. His secession is no unprepared or isolated event; it is rather the natural consequence of a num- ber of preparatory, incidents. About 1798, the priest Becker of Paderborn (Westphalia) was imprisoned by order of his ecclesi- astical superiors, the Prebends of the Cathedral. He never was brought to trial : the Prime Bishop and his Councillors felt that a. rash step had been taken, and connived at the old man's escape into-a secular and Protestant territory. The rest of his life was wasted in litigation with those who incarcerated but dared not bring a definite charge against him. Extracts (MS.) from his puma], written in confinement, are in our possession ; and it indicates his offence with sufficient clearness. He had been in the habit of instituting Sunday schools ; he had expressed a conviction that the religious processions of both sexes from village to village with the images of saints, in the course of which liquor was offered to the " pilgrims " at every farm- house and accepted by them, were productive of indecorums and graver offences against morality ; he was involved in a con- troversy with other priests on the relative importance of such formal observances and the observance of moral duties ; dis- couraged by his superiors, in the heat of argument he did not scruple to glance at the gallantry and general laxity of the Prebends who owed their stalls to their " quarterings" ; and finally, he spoke of Luther as a great man, whose rebellion against the Church was extenuated by the abuses against which he had struggled in vain. At that time and since, there have been not a few Beckers among the inferior Roman Catholic clergy, scattered through Germany, uninfluential because they had no communica- tion with each other, and because their superiors judiciously re- frained from persecuting them. There was another powerful deinent..at work to modify- the creed of the German adherents of the Italian Church. Under the Empire, ecclesiastical Electors and other Prelates possessing secular jurisdiction necessarily had each his staff of secular Councillors. Like almost all the literary class
of country, the ablest and most energetic of these men were about the beginning of the present century disciples of the French Revolutionary- school of politics; and more than one of the dignified clergy themselves had leanings that way. At the disrup- tion of the Empire, an Elector of Mayence did not scruple to take on him the office of Fiirat Primas of the Confederation of the
'lie. Under the protection of these free-thinking dignitaries and their Councils, latent dissent within the Church continued to gain ground. The personal impunity with which Hermes, Van Eck, and others have disseminated their neologieal opinions, and the persevering clamorous urgency of the Silesian priesthood to be allowed to take unto themselves wives, with many other local phamomena of a kindred character, have long convinced the ob- servant that reform (or innovation) from within was at hand in the German province of the Romish Church. Ronge and Czer- sky, like most other ecclesiastical and political reformers, are little more than accidents—the local weather-flaw, that becomes, in an atmosphere saturated with electricity, the nucleus of a storm. What direction the movement will take—what consequences at-will lead to—may admit, in the quaint language of the author of Urn Burial, of " a wide conjecture." Its more immediate effects in Germany will possibly disturb the territorial relations and balance of power in the Confederacy. The reigning house in Saxony appears to have opposed itself with keen partisanship to the German Catholics. The proselytizing spirit of these princes has long rendered them objects of jealousy to the zealously Pro- testant people over whom they reign. On the other hand, the Prussian Government appears to be countenancing the Ger- man Catholics, with just enough of seeming reluctance to take from neighbour princes any ground for remonstrance. The Prussian Government and the Royal House of Saxony are to all appearance placing themselves at the heads of the opposing parties. The relentless pertinacity, with which Prussia has r more than a hundred years kept adding territory to territory, dearly indicates what is likely to be, under these circumstances, the result of any popular commotion ; and the insult offered to Prince John, and the -blood shed by the soldiers at Leipzig, may bathe-beginning of one. In a few years, the remaining third* ef the Saxon Electorate may be annexed to Prussia. - But it is not likely that the effects of the movement among the Roman Catholics of Germany will be confined to that country. ?hough diffused over many lands, the Roman Catholic Church se one body : a disturbance in any part of it vibrates immediately through the whole. In certain states of the public opinion of the Church, it is peculiarly liable to be weakened by assaults like that *--.11: German compel:ail= of geography says, "The present Kingdom of astray can ef about one-third of tin former Electorate." of Ronge. It is not easy to parry an argument that appeals to the evidence of the senses. Many who would pay little attention to abstract reasoning against the miraculous virtues of the holy
• coat of Treves, are shaken when they are told that there are actually three holy coats in existence, all possessed of equal virtues. By persisting to attribute infallibility- to the office of priest, (if not to the office-bearer,) the Romish Church lays itself bare to attacks which cannot reach Protestant sects, who attribute infallibility to Scripture alone, and can always withdraw from an untenable position under the cover of a (misinterpretation." A Protestant error weakens only the individual, a Roman Catholic error weakens the Church. The effects of a controversy like that raised by Ronge can be confined to the country or district in which it originates only when the Roman Catholics of other countries are not predisposed to controversy. But over most part of Europe they are at this moment so predisposed. In Switzerland, the Jesuit controversy has opened a door to the sectaries of Ronge. In France, the University controversy has had the same effect. In Belgium, the priests have not always used the influence wisely which the Revolution threw into their hands. In Ireland, the M'Hales and Higginses are not ill- adapted to be precursors of some Irish Ronge ; and the ardour of some ecclesiastical Repealers is likely enough to predispose the Catholic aristocracy to a schism. As at the time of the Lutheran Reformation, the Italian priesthood will in all probability make it a question of national ascendancy in the Church ; and Austria, from fear of all innovation, will support them. In Italy and the Austrian dominions, the schism is least likely to be felt ; though in the latter, German Catholic- ism may find a point d'appui in Transylvania, while in the more sequestered districts of Moravia and Bohemia the traditional influence of the doctrines of the Moravian Brothers and John of Huss may not yet be utterly extinct. The progress of this new sect is a matter of general interest ; for it may alter the relations of internal parties in most European states, and diminish or increase the territories of leading members of the great European confederation.
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